Without thinking, I touched the tip of her hair to my tongue and kissed it away, and then I leaned in and kissed the sugar from her mouth.
That was the scene my mother walked in on: two wild girls sitting in the middle of a flower bed with an open jar of happiness beside them, and their lips tasting it together.
It was like a fairytale, from the beginning to the middle. Love, sealed with a kiss. But before we could reach the happy ending, the tape skipped and stuttered, and the screen went black.
My mother was silent and still, composed and dignified in the moments before it came time for her to deliver the mortal blow. She didn't speak until after Love had left, scampering off at a single look that was fierce enough to drive away even the most stubborn of birds.
It occurred to me that this woman who had raised me was much like a scarecrow: stuffed with straw, solemn and watchful, waiting in the shadows to expel anything or anyone who dared peck away at what she had grown.
She stooped down to gather up the jar which Love had abandoned in her flight and disappeared into the house, leaving me to trail after her with doom blooming in my gut. She was waiting with her back turned when I stepped inside, and I prepared myself for a ruckus of screaming and hurled objects.
Instead she just said quietly, "You will not see her again."
That night she served tea with our evening meal. The liquid was bland on my tongue as I sipped away at it, and I wondered if in her hatred, she had simply thrown all of the honey away.
—
I began to scheme and plot away at how I could be with Love again without facing repercussion. I got out my pencils and sketchbook, my ruler and my charcoals. With trembling hands I sketched out my plan until my fingers were smudged with black, and veins of silver graphite spidered across my palms. I paid it no mind. I valued love over being pristine.
In the massive oak tree bordering the fence between her land and mine, I built our home. The tree leaned heavily over to her side as if cowering away in shame, and it was just outside of my mother's field of vision from inside the house. Love would climb up the fence and tumble in through the window, and within those four walls we would be hidden, and safe.
"Junebird!" she would exclaim, landing on the window sill with bare feet like a flitting little bird. Her face would light up as if we hadn't seen each other in days. Each morning was our first. It was a wonderful way to live. It was a good enough way to live.
And then, the window appeared.
To Love, there was no such thing as a strange occurrence or a supernatural phenomenon. She welcomed the presence of the mystical window as naturally as she welcomed everything else, and seemed puzzled at my own puzzlement.
"It's simple," she said slowly, as though I were missing something painfully obvious. "Magic. Don't you believe in magic?"
"Well sure," I replied uneasily, though I wasn't sure what I believed in anymore. "But where did the window come from?"
"You tell me," she said. "You're the one who built it."
I had built a window, a plain wooden one that looked out onto open air. Not this other one. Not the cloudy glass, not the dim but beautiful light that emanated a comforting warmth, not the blurry images that moved just behind the surface like the films we used to watch on my old television. I had not created any of that, but she looked at me as if I had, as if I were the source of all things magical and unique in the world.
We would steal away to the treehouse during the day when my mother was distracted, or in the hush of night when the trees swayed their heads in judgment and the thin flannel of our pajamas was not enough to protect us from the chill of the air.
Her skin was always cool to the touch; I wanted to take her in my hands and pour all of my warmth into her until she was soft and golden like honey, I wanted to drink from her lips to satiety so that some of her sweetness could flow into me. I wanted to do that for her, but sometimes I felt cold too. Then I could only shiver and watch as she sat in the light of the window, seeking its brief and gentle comfort.
.,.....
